The Llama of Death

by Betty Webb

  Same man, different lives.

  “Who killed you, Victor?” I whispered. “Whoever was driving that getaway car? A relative of your victim?”

  I wasn’t yet ready to believe his killer might be someone close to me.

  ***

  During my lunch break the next day I drove over to Gunn Castle to share what I had discovered about Victor Emerson with my father, and find out whether he’d learned anything not covered by Google.

  “Miss Aster Edwina is in the library conversing with our houseguest,” Mrs. McGinty said as we clattered down the hall. “How pleasant it is to have him here.”

  “Yeah, he’s quite the charmer.”

  Upon entering the library, I saw the old rogue relaxing in a wingback chair while the aristocratic doyenne of the great Gunn family massaged some sort of cream onto his hands. When she looked up and saw me, she didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed.

  “Oh, it’s only you, Teddy. Shouldn’t you be at work?” Rub. Rub.

  Dad, recognizing that massage time had ended, withdrew his hands. “Hi, Teddy. I have some information for you.”

  “And I for you. Could we have a word in private?”

  Aster Edwina glared, but at a reproving look from my father, she suggested Mrs. McGinty take us into the drawing room. She herself had business to take care of in the library. Reading up on the Marquis de Sade, probably.

  As a child, I had always found the drawing room intimidating with its multiple fireplaces, paired Gainsboroughs, scary suits of armor, and wall-mounted displays of vicious-looking medieval weapons. Now I merely found it drafty. After Mrs. McGinty backed out of the room, Dad and I sat on facing Victorian settees more attractive than comfortable.

  I told him what I’d already learned about Victor. “Now it’s your turn,” I finished.

  “May the Gods of Google continue to smile on you. As for my paltry offerings, what do you want first, the good news or the bad?”

  “Lump it together.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “Said the felon to the abettor.”

  “Manners, Teddy, manners.” He fetched a cell phone from his pocket and poked it a couple of times. A screen lit up, full of data. “Here’s what I’ve learned. It may not sound like much, but I’m certain more information is yet to come. First of all, the man you knew as Victor Emerson most definitely did have an accomplice in that convenience store heist, a gal named Kate Garrick. She was his main squeeze and was pregnant, to boot. If the robbery had been successful, they were going to stay with one of Kate’s cousins until the baby was born, then move to Florida.”

  Ironic, considering that the victim’s wife had been pregnant, too.

  “What happened to the girlfriend? And the baby?”

  “After the killing, Kate dropped out of sight for a few months, not even her parents knew where she was. When she turned up again, there was no baby in sight.”

  “Adoption?”

  “Always a possibility, among other things.”

  I didn’t want to think about the “other things.”

  “What else did your source tell you?”

  He poked the cell phone again. “She wound up marrying a blackjack dealer at one of the Vegas casinos and after a few years, they moved to Jersey. That’s all I’ve got on her. So far, anyway. I have more feelers out. As to Glenn Jamison’s…”

  “Call him Victor or I’ll get confused.”

  “Whatever you wish. Anyway, as to your Victor’s prison career, word going around is that he was a snitch. That’s someone who…”

  “I know what a snitch is, Dad.”

  “Yes, every high school has one. Zoos, too, I expect. Like I was saying, Glenn…ah, Victor wound up in the prison infirmary on more than one occasion. One time he had a broken finger, the other time he’d been shanked.” He looked up. “A shank is…”

  “I know what a shank is, too.”

  “Been watching prison movies, have you?”

  “My all-time fav is Busty Blond Bombshells in Big Chains.”

  His face took on a disapproving expression. “You weren’t raised to be so snotty, Teddy.”

  “No, I was raised to be my felon father’s co-conspirator. But don’t mind me, just go ahead and tell me the rest of what your criminal friends found out, probably by twisting arms and pulling out fingernails and such.”

  The disapproving expression deepened. “My friends are white collar criminals. Good people. Never violent.”

  “And the Yeti eloped with Big Foot.”

  “Do you want to know what I know or do you want to just sit there cracking wise?”

  I tried to look contrite. “Sorry, Dad.”

  “You should be, you ungrateful brat. Anyway, the people I spoke with say that escaping was the only thing that kept Victor alive. Up until now, that is. He made a lot of enemies during his sojourn in Ely, and those people aren’t the forgiving kind. Especially when it comes to snitches.”

  “Were you been able to come up with the names of people he snitched on?”

  “Not yet, but I will. My sources are still working on it. Oh, and here’s another tidbit I picked up. Know what Victor was called in prison? You’ll love it.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “The Preacher. Seems his father was a Pentecostal minister and our boy had been well-drilled in Scripture, not that it seems to have worked out very well in the behavior department, which seems to be true of so many preachers these days. On Sundays, when the prison chaplain wasn’t available, probably escorting some poor wretch to the electric chair or gas chamber or whatever death device they use in Nevada, Victor would lead the services, hallelujah, brothers and sisters!”

  During his pause for breath, I was able to put two and two together. “Dad, preachers marry people.”

  “Why state the obvious?”

  “Don’t you get it? While growing up, Victor must have seen his father perform hundreds of marriage ceremonies, so setting himself up as a phony chaplain was easy. Ergo, the wedding chapel.”

  The playfulness left his voice. “There’s one little problem that doesn’t seem to have crossed your mind yet, and it’s not good news for your mother.”

  “Which is?”

  “Your Victor Emerson was a convicted felon living under an assumed name, which means he was legally ineligible to officiate over state functions. I happen to know from my own matrimonial adventure with your mother that in order to perform a binding marriage ceremony, the reverend or rabbi or justice of the peace or whatever must have an up-to-date, state-approved license to do so. The license must be issued in the person’s legal name, otherwise, any marriage he or she performs could be considered null and void.”

  I looked down at my arms and saw goose bumps. “Victor performed marriage ceremonies for Mother twice.”

  “Yes he did, Teddy, both times to multi-millionaires. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter and the like, Gunn Landing gossip makes it all the way to Costa Rica, so I happen to know that when those marriages ended, Caro received large spousal support settlements, making it possible for her—and you—to continue living in the luxury to which I’d accustomed her. What do you think both of those exes are going to do now, hmm? Shrug and let the spousal support issue slide? Knowing the filthy rich as well as I do, when the news about Victor’s falsified license comes out those men’s attorneys will rush to civil court and demand Caro pay back every penny of their clients’ money.”

  “But she married them in good faith!”

  He put the cell phone back in his pocket. “Where money’s concerned, there’s no such thing as good faith.”

  ***

  Feeling sick, I drove back to the zoo. After parking my Nissan in the employee’s lot, I sat there for a while, just thinking. When the truth came out, e
ven someone as dense as Acting Sheriff Elvin Dade would understand he had been handed the Mother Lode of motives. He no longer had to convince the county attorney that Caro killed Victor in a passing snit over the Anne Boleyn snub. Instead, he could argue that somehow she’d found out the phony reverend’s true identity and realized her ride on the Money Train was about to end. Faced with the prospect of a financial apocalypse, calmer souls than my mother might respond with rage.

  But a murderous rage?

  I didn’t think so. Caro might be greedy but I couldn’t see her killing someone over money. She would simply marry another multi-millionaire after ensuring that the selected reverend or justice of the peace was on the up-and-up.

  As I headed across the zoo parking lot to the employee’s entrance, it occurred to me that Caro’s was not the only person whose marriage—or marriages, plural—now existed in legal limbo. Off the top of my head, I could name several couples Victor had married, many of them friends of mine. Zookeepers Deborah and Phil Holt. The battling Sazacs. Bambi O’Dair and her ex. Medieval weapons retailers Melissa and Cary Keegan. Maybe even Caro’s maid and her unemployed ex-con husband. Some of the couples had children, with complicated their situations. Once a judge ruled on the status of their marriages, would their children be labeled illegitimate? Illegitimacy might not be the social disgrace it had once been, but it could play havoc in certain legal cases. Inheritance, for instance.

  What a legal quagmire Victor Emerson/Glenn Jamison had created!

  Would all his former clients have to re-marry to be considered on the up-and-up? Would fathers be forced to adopt their own children?

  I didn’t know enough about the law to guess how it would play out in the end, but it was a good bet that when the family law attorneys of San Sebastian County found out about the sham marriages, they would lift a chorus of hosannas to the heavens. This thought immediately brought back the image of Frank Turnbull minus his Speedo, so I forced myself to stop thinking about such things.

  Thus it was only hours later, when I was in the midst of shoveling anteater dung into a wheelbarrow, that the names of another not-really-married couple occurred to me.

  Acting Sheriff Elvin Dade and his holier-than-thou wife, Wynona.

  Chapter Nine

  If Wynona had discovered her marriage was invalid and her children’s legitimacy thrown into question, the shame and embarrassment might have sent her off her head. Maybe enough to commit murder. If so, it would explain Acting Sheriff Elvin Dade’s odd behavior in the llama enclosure. Elvin’s brain operated on low wattage, but even someone as dim as he knew better than to stomp back and forth across a crime scene, obliterating the killer’s tracks—not to mention pulling out the crossbow bolt and wiping it down, destroying any remaining fingerprints.

  My shock segued into anger. No wonder he had been so quick to accuse Caro. He was sacrificing my mother to keep his wife out of jail!

  Hands shaking, I resumed shoveling anteater dung until the enclosure was spotless. Hard physical work has its perks, and one of them was burning off the adrenaline that accompanied a full-out rage attack. By the time I trundled the loaded wheelbarrow over to the recycling area for local gardeners to pick up, I had calmed enough to use my brain again. An officer of the law, Elvin Dade would never frame an innocent woman, not even to save his own wife. Oh, yes, he would, a little imp whispered into my ear. I tried to ignore it. As for Wynona, I’d never liked the self-righteous prig, but imagining her as a cold-blooded killer proved impossible. It was also inconceivable that she had seen a crossbow before working the Renaissance Faire, let alone had the skill to murder someone with it. The imp whispered again, reminding me that she might have attended one of the Faire’s medieval weapons demonstrations. As for skill, Victor might have been shot close up—something we would never know because of Elvin’s clue-destroying behavior.

  The imp went on to remind me of an observation by Sherlock Holmes crime writers loved to quote: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

  How much did I really know about Wynona?

  Not much, I realized. Unlike me, she wasn’t a lifelong San Sebastian County resident. I’d once heard that Wynona’s family moved to San Sebastian when she was a teen, and that her parents had been killed in a car wreck around the time of her marriage to Elvin. Soon afterwards, she and her new husband had immediately decamped from a shabby rented bungalow into her parents’ much nicer house.

  The imp whispered into my ear again: Convenient car wreck, wasn’t it?

  Disgusted with my suspicions about an innocent, however obnoxious, woman I sent the imp packing. One thing was for certain. A trip to the county clerk’s office was in order. I needed to find out how many other marriages Victor had officiated over, but to do that I needed to take some time off. Rather than beg Aster Edwina, I would ask the zoo director.

  Zorah Vega was in her office when I stopped by the zoo’s administration building after clocking out. On a bulletin board she had pinned a colorful blowup of Sssybil’s Facebook page, on which the snake had described her adventures.

  Without looking up from a huge pile of papers, Zorah okayed my request. “Phil and Deborah Holt came in this morning asking for extra hours, something about dental bills, so that’ll work out nicely for all of you. Apparently that weird boat they live on needs major repair work, and given your recent problems with the Merilee, you know all about liveaboarder expenses.”

  Months earlier I had been driven to near-financial ruin buying a new motor for the Merilee, but the Holt’s appropriately named Flotsam was another matter entirely. Built out of mismatched remnants from various salvaged vessels, the houseboat was in constant peril of being declared unseaworthy.

  “And by the way, Teddy, you’re the lion this year.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, for the Great Escape.”

  With everything else on my mind, I had forgotten about The Great Escape, the yearly drill that honed the zoo’s Code Red skills. Heaven forbid a lion escaped its enclosure, but if one did, we would be ready.

  “Zorah, I don’t think…”

  She looked up from her papers for the first time. “It’s next Friday at six-thirty, which’ll give you time to get into your lion costume after the zoo closes for the day. I’ve already plotted your escape route. This time the media will be following part way, so make sure Ariel Gonzales’ crew gets good coverage. Girlfriend’s all pumped about it.”

  “But…”

  “It’s obvious that our capture skills need honing. Take Sssybil’s escape, for instance. It could have been handled better, which is probably why she’s still not back. Good thing she’s not loose in a heavily populated area, huh?” Her face twisted into a half-grin. “And at least she’s tweeting regularly and keeping her Facebook page up to date. Ha! I hope the next time we hear from her, or about her, it’s not because somebody got fanged or a farm worker went after her with a hoe. In the meantime, I’m holding Phil Holt personally responsible. He should have notified me earlier there was termite damage to the reptile house. I can’t imagine why he didn’t. Something else on his mind, maybe? Probably that damned houseboat. Money troubles are the worst, aren’t they? Oh, well. Come to think of it, the same warning goes for you, too. If you see a problem or something that could eventually become a problem, notify me immediately.”

  “Of course I will, but about the Great Escape. I can’t…”

  “Here’s the way it’s gonna work.” She stood up and walked over to the big mural of the Gunn Zoo on the wall behind her. Tracing her finger along the trails, she said, “You, in your lion costume, will ‘escape’ from the night house behind the big cat enclosure. You’ll run down the hill along Africa Trail toward California Habitat with park rangers, zookeepers, and the media hot on your furry little heels. Make sure you growl a lot. And take swipes at them wit
h your paws every now and then. Be the lion!”

  “But…”

  She shushed me with a wave. “Save your breath, Teddy. Aster Edwina personally chose you for this. She says you really know how to play to the camera.”

  I groaned.

  Continuing to trace the Great Escape route on the map, she said, “On Africa Trail, you’ll run past the zebras, giraffes, Watusi cattle, rhinos, and elands. Very camera-friendly stuff. From California Habitat you’ll cut across that little valley to Down Under, maybe slow a bit so the cameras can get the koalas and wallabies, they’re so cute and the children love them. You’ll have about ten minutes to take a breather there, because everyone will stop following you. They’ll be coming back up here to do other things. But after your break, you’ll run up the Tropics Trail hill to Monkey Mania, where the chasers will pick you up again.”

  “Wait a minute, what ‘other things’ will they do?”

  “That’s where I come in. Aster Edwina wants me to demonstrate how the zoo puts together diets that range all the way from termites to cow carcasses, so I’ll lead the media and anyone else who wants to come along on a tour through the animals’ cafeteria.”

  “Maybe you should skip the termite barrel. And the worm trays. For non-zookeepers they can be sickening.”

  “Aster Edwina’s orders,” Zorah replied, shaking her head. “She wants people to realize it’s not all glamour and glitz around here.”

  Since I could still smell the anteater dung on my shoes, I had to agree.

  “Anyway, while we’re doing that, ” she continued, “you’ll still be hanging out in the bushes near Down Under, getting all rested up. When we’re through with the animal cafeteria tour, I’ll radio you that it’s time to start toward Monkey Mania. The media will be there by then, so make sure you’re running flat out, okay? They’ll chase you all the way back to the lion house and then net you. Try not to fall too hard, okay? Once, the guy who played the lion broke his wrist. All in all, it’ll be about a two-mile run, but you’re in good shape so you shouldn’t have any trouble, especially with that ten minute rest stop near Down Under. And the day should be cooling down by then, so it shouldn’t be too hot in that lion suit.”